Making the lives of IT easier: Windows 8 Refresh, Reset, and Windows To Go

In spite of BUILD's developer focus, Microsoft has shown off a few Windows 8 …

Though aimed primarily at software developers, last week's BUILD conference introduced a few new Windows 8 features that will make the lives of enterprise IT departments easier. Windows 8 Refresh and Reset will both make it easier to clean malfunctioning systems and restore them to a working state, and Windows To Go offers new deployment features using Windows installations that run directly from USB.

Refresh and Reset both revert Windows back to its system defaults. The difference between the two is the extent to which the system gets reset. "Refresh" preserves user settings, user data, and applications bought through the Windows store. Everything else is removed and restored to defaults. The process is quick, taking just a few minutes to complete.

Reset goes further. It purges all applications and data, and reinstalls the operating system essentially from scratch. This reverts the OS to the same status as it would be after a brand new fresh installation; you have to reenter a license key and perform initial setup once complete.

Refresh and Reset both streamline a range of troubleshooting steps. Refresh handles situations where a system is behaving strangely for some reason—such as an application breaking a file association, or installing a load of unwanted startup programs—but which has valuable user data on it. Reset is for more serious problems, such as virus infection or some catastrophic system failure. It's also ideal for preparing machines for resale. Both are sure to win fans among both professional IT support and those lumbered with the often joyless task of aiding friends and family.

Windows To Go is an enterprise-oriented feature that enables users to run Windows from USB thumb drives. Deployment to USB media uses the standard Windows imaging and deployment tools, such as ImageX and WIM images, and the result is a fully featured Windows install. The USB install is fully self-contained—it makes no changes to a system's hard disk—and is fully updateable. New software can be installed, documents can be saved, Windows can be updated. It can be domain-joined and GPO-administered. The only downside is that the system might take a little longer to boot.

Microsoft has a few scenarios in mind for Windows To Go. Windows To Go images can be provided to contractors, who generally have their own PCs, to give them a trusted way of accessing corporate networks. Similarly, a company with employees who occasionally work from home could equip its staff with Windows To Go USB keys, so that they can use their home PCs to safely connect to their work environments. The technology will also be useful to organizations that use hot-desking and shared PCs; they can give users their own USB disk, and then no matter which machine the users are sitting in front of, they'll always get their own desktop and setup.

Making Windows To Go work has required a number of changes to be made to Windows. The biggest is how Windows responds to having the disk removed. Traditionally, Windows would crash with a blue-screen if its boot disk was removed, because removing the disk would leave it with no way of accessing its pagefile or other essential data. With Windows To Go, removal of the boot disk is detected and results in the machine being frozen for a minute. If the disk is returned during that minute, the operating system unfreezes and carries on as normal. If it isn't, it performs a shutdown.

The USB operating system also includes smarter support for hardware detection. The first time the USB key is booted on a new PC, it has to perform hardware discovery and detection. Subsequent boots on the same PC, however, can skip this step—the USB key remembers the drivers and devices found on each machine. This allows roaming between different hardware configurations to be both fast and seamless.

As Windows 8's development continues, Microsoft will reveal more business-oriented features. Improved BranchCache support, and GPO deployment of Metro style applications are both in the cards, and there are sure to be other updates to improve manageability and reliability. Reset, Refresh, and Windows To Go are sure to be joined by other features to make IT departments' lives easier.

102 Reader Comments

Perhaps restore and reset will actually be useful as opposed to the basically useless system restore functionality currently employed. I'm excited about the To Go functionality. It's about time they caught up with Linux on that front.

I must say, I'm seeing shades of XP color schemes every time I see a Win8 article though. I don't think it'll take long before the (apparently) standard green theme becomes as obsolete looking as XP's default Blue theme.

The same smarter automatic hardware detection appears to be built into the OS in all installs. This has a really great interaction with having both Hyper-V on the client and the ability to boot VHDs on the bare machine.

If you install the OS in a VM and later boot that VHD directly, the first time it will do the extended hardware detection at boot time. After that, you can switch back and forth between using that same VHD under Hyper-V or booted directly seemlessly, with it remembering the different drivers and configurations. This is extremely useful for me.

Perhaps restore and reset will actually be useful as opposed to the basically useless system restore functionality currently employed. I'm excited about the To Go functionality. It's about time they caught up with Linux on that front.

While there are many scenarios where System Restore isn't helpful, it's certainly made my life a hell of a lot easier on several occasions. It's far from useless.

I like the new ideas coming from MS, they are creative and well... good!

When Vista came out I had all but given up on them, and cursed them to hell and back... Win7 made me forgive them and 8 sounds like it will make me like them again!

Good job MS, and I hope you fired the Vista team to come to here.(Yes, still hate Vista, I have pals who bring me their comps because something is "not working" and when I see Vista is the OS... I feel like I need to register for anger management classes)

This is all very well ... but ... how will they ensure the security of a Windows installation on a USB stick? I mean, look at the incompetence of (insert various organization here) the NHS for instance, losing gigabytes of unencrypted but sensitive health data on a laptop. Surely this will just make the problem worse..

Long sleepless nights for those security people at companies that implement this feature I guess...

I really don't understand where Microsoft is going with their Metro UI. Where iOS is smooth and full of wonderful and detailed graphics, Metro is sterile, boring and without any visual eye-candy. Metro has the capability of looking attractive, as it does in the Developer Preview in the taskbar with details, but on a phone and a tablet it just looks... boring... both to use and to look at...

sounds like system restore with a simplistic UI hastily slapped on top. so i imagine it will work about as well, sluggishly fixing your problem half the time and utterly destroying your system the other half.

this simplistic-UI-hastily-slapped-on business seems to be a running gag in windows 8...

This is all very well ... but ... how will they ensure the security of a Windows installation on a USB stick? I mean, look at the incompetence of (insert various organization here) the NHS for instance, losing gigabytes of unencrypted but sensitive health data on a laptop. Surely this will just make the problem worse..

Full hard drive encryption with BitLocker.

'sides, what does it matter if you lose the OS + data instead of just the data on USB stick? Heck, if you throw the OS on a USB stick, you can use the OS's encryption features everywhere, which makes using the encryption much more convenient, and thus more likely to be used to begin with!

Unless the IT department is completely clueless or without any clout within an organization, this is an easy change to make (once recovery of lost/stolen keys is in place, anyway).

Which begs the question: will it only be available to volume licensing (enterprise) customers, and/or is their an extra cost involved? It sounds great - too great, in fact, to come free with all versions of the OS. Pardon my skepticism/cynicism/whateverism, but it almost sounds "too good to be true." I can think of quite a few non-enterprise uses.

If reset could be used to remove all the crap-ware from pre-installed systems it'd be a god send; I just don't see it happening however. It'll probably work the same as the restore feature on pre-installed systems which basically overwrites the main HD with a saved image (crap-ware and all).Refresh looks attractive, specially once they get it to work per application and get it to support non-windows store apps.

Perhaps restore and reset will actually be useful as opposed to the basically useless system restore functionality currently employed.

Combine Windows Backup+System Restore creating snapshots of files and system state and you have a great, quick way to get rid of unexplainable, small-to-medium problems that aren't malware related.

Personal example, something had happened to my PC that made nothing work. I couldn't install programs, open administrative tools or do any sort of maintenance. No idea what had happened. System Restored to a good period 2 weeks back and I was good to go.

sounds like system restore with a simplistic UI hastily slapped on top. so i imagine it will work about as well, sluggishly fixing your problem half the time and utterly destroying your system the other half.

this simplistic-UI-hastily-slapped-on business seems to be a running gag in windows 8...

One question is how many businesses will want to go through the App store for in house applications. I certainly don't for personal applications. The more I see Microsoft trying to tie Windows 8 to the App store, the farther away from it I want to stay. The Windows 7 support for creating a system image actually works quite well as long as a modest size partition is used for the system drive. In an era when 2 terabyte drives cost less that $100, it is easy to dedicate a 100 gigabyte partition for Windows and keep a couple of 50 gigabyte backup images around in case something goes wrong. Since my disastrous experience with the zero value service pack for Windows 7, that is what I have chosen to do.

They should be careful when reusing terms like "reset" with a different meaning (especially such a destructive one).

I can just imagine someone new to computers coming across a troubleshooting guide in which the first step is "reset your machine", and proceeding to destroy all of their data because they don't know any better.

This is a great and easy option, but I'm really quite annoyed at the whole "only Windows Store programs are kept". Really, Microsoft? I know you want people to use your store, but bullying users into it by effectively forcing them to reinstall all other programs whenever they want to refresh Windows is a pretty annoying move. Surely there is a way around it - a corrupt Windows install is a perfectly legitimate thing to want to fix without losing all of one's files and programs, as even the "your programs could be malware!" argument assumes that all problems Windows has are the result of malicious software, which is both an arrogant assumption and looks down on the end user's ability to use their own PC.

'sides, what does it matter if you lose the OS + data instead of just the data on USB stick? Heck, if you throw the OS on a USB stick, you can use the OS's encryption features everywhere, which makes using the encryption much more convenient, and thus more likely to be used to begin with!

Unless the IT department is completely clueless or without any clout within an organization, this is an easy change to make (once recovery of lost/stolen keys is in place, anyway).

I suppose..

I don't know that much about bitlocker, but I thought that it required a TPM module or the like? So if a TPM is specific to the motherboard, would your Chicken-to-Go installation only work on one computer?

This is a great and easy option, but I'm really quite annoyed at the whole "only Windows Store programs are kept". Really, Microsoft? I know you want people to use your store, but bullying users into it by effectively forcing them to reinstall all other programs whenever they want to refresh Windows is a pretty annoying move.

Microsoft can enforce where Metro apps are installed and what they are allowed to do. They cannot do that with XnView, wget, or Imperial Glory. Thus, there is no way of knowing if what Windows thinks is a complete install actually is a complete install, and thus it cannot know if the whole installation can actually be refreshed.

Quote:

Surely there is a way around it - a corrupt Windows install is a perfectly legitimate thing to want to fix without losing all of one's files and programs, as even the "your programs could be malware!" argument assumes that all problems Windows has are the result of malicious software

"Guilty, until proven otherwise." Unless the software has been completely audited, it represents a security risk. That's why code signing, and UAC exists today, as well as things like SmartScreen.

Quote:

which is both an arrogant assumption and looks down on the end user's ability to use their own PC.

I don't know that much about bitlocker, but I thought that it required a TPM module or the like?

It can make use of one if it exists. However, TPM doesn't necessarily store an encryption key that is generated by TPM (that's a bad idea to do, anyway, if an encrypted HD fails, for example: You want to get back to your data from backup!).

Quote:

So if a TPM is specific to the motherboard, would your Teriyaki-Chicken-to-Go installation only work on one computer?

which is both an arrogant assumption and looks down on the end user's ability to use their own PC.

1. if they knew how to use their PC it wouldn't be fragged in the first place2. this service is totally optional. microsoft isn't going to "OK" non-audited software. audited software from the app store = known, known source, thus is easy to either leave in place or download from a trusted location during refresh.

If it flops, it will mostly be because of the rabid haters, like yourself, bad-mouthing it without ever having had tried it.

I don't have to try it. I'm not expressing an opinion about it one way or the other; I am not bad-mouthing it at all. I am simply pointing out the objective fact that the market has spoken; the public has expressed its desires with regard to iPhone and to WP7. It doesn't matter what you think of it or what I think of it.

I can't understand why Microsoft defenders, who have spent more than a decade using market-share as their irrefutable metric when gauging Windows' success, suddenly start rejecting objective market data when it goes the other way.

Windows has gone too long without these features. The third-party tools for this have been either grossly inadequate or wholly overblown, with too few options short of re-image or re-install.

Mac and Linux systems having had similar features for quite some time, this is a major step for Windows towards blurring the distinction.

What I hope most of all, however, is that this reflects a fundamental reinforcement of the system model. Userland, Systemland, and Core OS have always been too intermingled in Windows. Properly enforcing these boundaries would go a great length toward protecting Windows from the kind of malware bullshit that, somewhat ironically, calls for features like Refresh and Restore in the first place.

If it flops, it will mostly be because of the rabid haters, like yourself, bad-mouthing it without ever having had tried it.

I don't have to try it. I'm not expressing an opinion about it one way or the other; I am not bad-mouthing it at all. I am simply pointing out the objective fact that the market has spoken; the public has expressed its desires with regard to iPhone and to WP7. It doesn't matter what you think of it or what I think of it.

I can't understand why Microsoft defenders, who have spent more than a decade using market-share as their irrefutable metric when gauging Windows' success, suddenly start rejecting objective market data when it goes the other way.

It has nothing to do with "haters" or the "market speaking". It's a matter of an undermarketed version 1 product not getting consumer cachet. If you think that v1 reflects everything you need to know about a product, and that it will never go farther, then that would have made Blackberry, Android, and other smartphones failures after v1 as well. A mature platform with a full set of features and a hardware vendor 100% committed to marketing and selling devices will tell a much better story. Saying that WP7 is a 100% marketplace failure with no future is the same as saying Windows 1.0 was a failure in the same fashion. The consumer market is not all black-or-white when it comes to promising platforms that are backed by real money and innovation. WebOS had a better future waiting for it as well, IMO, if it were backed by a real software company with real R&D budget. (i.e. Google or Microsoft, not Palm or HP)

It has nothing to do with "haters" or the "market speaking". It's a matter of an undermarketed version 1 product not getting consumer cachet.

Respectfully, how can you know this? I understand that there are many ways to evaluate something (particularly something as sophisticated as an operating system). But I just can't see why success or failure in an open free market isn't the only reasonable criteria for gauging the success or failure of a commercial product.

I would love to defend (say) the Apple Newton using a similar argument: I could claim that the device was fatally hampered by bad salesmanship, bad pricing, arbitrary marketing factors, etc. and that the underlying product was superior. But I must refrain from making this argument (as much as I really loved my Newton) because I know I've got it wrong. Pilot (later Palm) came along two years later and PROVED that Apple had it wrong.

Either the discussion is framed this way, or it's simply your personal preferences vs. mine, which isn't any fun.

If it flops, it will mostly be because of the rabid haters, like yourself, bad-mouthing it without ever having had tried it.

I don't have to try it. I'm not expressing an opinion about it one way or the other; I am not bad-mouthing it at all. I am simply pointing out the objective fact that the market has spoken; the public has expressed its desires with regard to iPhone and to WP7. It doesn't matter what you think of it or what I think of it.

I can't understand why Microsoft defenders, who have spent more than a decade using market-share as their irrefutable metric when gauging Windows' success, suddenly start rejecting objective market data when it goes the other way.

Well reviews for Windows Phone are great and the UI is considered by most to not be also-ran and the app store has thousands more apps than the size of the user base would seem to warrant. You can say that the market place has decided, but that makes it seem like the race is over when it isn't (millions upon millions of users who haven't jumped to smart phones yet), and given the high props for WP, it begs a deeper look at why the phone doesn't sell better. My guess is that it has to be with availability (world wide), and the marketing (including what happens to consumer-Joe when he walks into the phone store). One this is for sure though - the vast majority of average consumers don't even know what a Windows Phone is...

Back on to point - what your noticing is a fan boy thing and it certainly isn't unique to MS supporters.

When Apple didn't have a lot of sales, sales didn't matter, just what the few people who used their stuff thought of it... then Apple had sales, so now sales matter.

When MS has something with sales, the people complaining about it don't matter - but when they don't have the sales, and the reviews are still good, then reviews are all that matter.

Take a look at Nintendo fan boys for another example - last gen, sales didn't matter, only review scores... once the Wii came out, sales all of a sudden mattered and the shovelware did not.

One of the things that has made me dread system restore is that I have had serveral viruses that are not removable until I clear out system restore then somehow the virus is gone on next removal, not that I am not reinstalling the OS as fast as possible anyways because who knows what got on that isn't detectable while the other trojan/virus is there. Now I may have just needed to get rid of the instance with the virus and not everything, but I am more than sure it would be high on a virus creators list to infect these locations to survive. I don't even trust OEM restore partitions, since no enterprise OS is loaded on the computers I get this doesn't make a difference. The USB keys are what I really am interested in especially with USB3 speeds.

I like many others am interested in Microsoft's licensing for such features.

You can call me a hater, but you'd be wrong. I would like to just like Microsoft. But no matter how good they make their products, I consider them to be the Visigoths of computers. Their barbarian attitudes about "capitalism" and competition say it all. Examples include: lying about their competitors to their customers, deploying proxies for lawsuits against Linux, hiding patents in shell companies through Intellectual Ventures as leverage for negotiation and killing off just about every partner they have ever gotten into bed with - that's enough for me to just stay the hell away from them.

Sure, I'll support their OS at work because it's there. But the future lies in a free, open source operating system with complete transparency. Microsoft doesn't have enough brains to out-innovate free software. Proof? Just look at how BeOS tried to live on the same hard drive and failed, then witness how Linux just worked around Windows to get control of the first sector. And even if they did have enough brains, Microsoft's perverse desire for world domination makes me sick to my stomach. I'd rather know that I can retrieve my data while using free software than worry that what I'm doing with my computer is "not supported", or that the formats I used have been "deprecated" and being forced to upgrade.

I'm sure there are some nice things about Windows 8, but Microsoft's barbarian business attitude isn't one of them.

It has nothing to do with "haters" or the "market speaking". It's a matter of an undermarketed version 1 product not getting consumer cachet.

Respectfully, how can you know this? I understand that there are many ways to evaluate something (particularly something as sophisticated as an operating system). But I just can't see why success or failure in an open free market isn't the only reasonable criteria for gauging the success or failure of a commercial product.

I think that's a fair question. I'll say that I base it on the fact that the marketplace has suggested it does have room for what WP7 provides. Unlike say your example of the Newton. The Newton was ahead of its time, did not have the hardware to match it's promise, and couldn't deliver on the handwriting and other input revolutions it promised. WP7 is not that kind of product. In fact, it is the other side of the coin, in my view. It's playing upon an established marketplace for mobile products, catching up in important areas, and innovating in others. Would you say there is any part of WP7 that is too far out in front of the consumer marketplace for mobile devices? It's pretty standard in core functionality, but it offers a few things Android and iOS don't: Innovative UI/UX, and deep integration with a wide variety of social networks into the core of the OS. So what's missing? The competition had a head start, and there have been no advocates among their hardware partners. (Every single one of them also makes money off Android.)

That's why I think it still has more than a reasonable outlook in the marketplace, especially with Nokia coming on board. WP7.5 closes the feature gap, the apps are coming much faster now, and more feature-rich, and they have a tier-1 hardware vendor who will push *hard* on the platform in every single regional market because it is in their own best interest. I'm not saying WP7 will take over the world, but I think it is ridiculous to call it an outright market failure at this point.

You can call me a hater, but you'd be wrong. I would like to just like Microsoft. But no matter how good they make their products, I consider them to be the Visigoths of computers. Their barbarian attitudes about "capitalism" and competition say it all. Examples include: lying about their competitors to their customers, deploying proxies for lawsuits against Linux, hiding patents in shell companies through Intellectual Ventures as leverage for negotiation and killing off just about every partner they have ever gotten into bed with - that's enough for me to just stay the hell away from them.

<citation needed>

Seriously. I can understand some of that, but Microsoft's business model is built entire AROUND their partnerships. It's probably one of their biggest weaknesses that Apple has exploited. They refuse to compete against all of their hardware partners and most of their software partners. You just rattled off a conspiracy-level FOSS argument that needs a lot of factual backing up before I'd take it seriously.

Both are nice to see microsoft is taking features that can almost be done now and building integrated versions in. With the "Refresh and Reset" the "oem" partners will more than likely configure the restore profile to load there system image when you run the program so we will still have the junk ware back unless the now DOJ free ms doesn't put a smack down on them. Windows to go seems to be an more refined version of the Existing Win PE/ Win RE discs you can build but allowing you to make one comparable to knoppix.

Both are nice to see microsoft is taking features that can almost be done now and building integrated versions in. With the "Refresh and Reset" the "oem" partners will more than likely configure the restore profile to load there system image

very useful in an enterprise environment.

Quote:

when you run the program so we will still have the junk ware back unless the now DOJ free ms doesn't put a smack down on them.